49ers will return to Mexico City to face Cardinals in 2022
If the 49ers are to make a playoff push this season, it will come with a Mexican tour stop.
The Arizona Cardinals will host the 49ers in Mexico City on Nov. 21, the Monday night of Thanksgiving week.
It is one of five international games the NFL announced Wednesday morning.
The November game is a rematch of the 49ers’ 2005 loss to the Cardinals in Mexico, and it is the 49ers’ first game abroad since their 2013 playoff team won in London against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca sits at 7,200 feet above sea level, and it’s unknown when the 49ers will travel ahead of the game or if they’ll prepare for that altitude by practicing the preceding week in Colorado Springs, Colo., as other teams have done before playing in Mexico.
The NFL will reveal its full schedule next Thursday. The first game announced Wednesday is the NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in Germany, with the Seattle Seahawks playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Nov. 13.
The Cardinals were set to host a 2020 game in Mexico before COVID canceled the NFL’s international slate for that season.
This will count as one of the 49ers’ eight regular-season road games as they avoid a return to Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, where they took up temporary shelter the final month of the 2020 season because of Santa Clara County health regulations banning them. The 49ers lost last year to the Cardinals both in Arizona (in Trey Lance’s first NFL start) and at Levi’s Stadium.
The 49ers, last season’s NFC runner-up, will play nine home games this regular season, with the added game coming via last season’s schedule expansion to 17 overall games.
Those visitors to Levi’s Stadium are the Cardinals, the Los Angeles Rams, the Seattle Seahawks, the Miami Dolphins, the New Orleans Saints, the Tampa Bay Bucs, the Washington Commanders, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers.
The 49ers’ other away games are at the Las Vegas Raiders, the Denver Broncos, the Chicago Bears, the Carolina Panthers, the Atlanta Falcons and the NFC West stops at the Rams and the Seahawks.
In their 2005 visit to Mexico, the 49ers lost 31-14 to Arizona, and the NFL’s first regular-season game outside the United States drew 103,467 fans at Estadio Azteca.
Bad field conditions there forced the 2018 game to be moved to Los Angeles where the Rams outlasted the Kansas City Chiefs 54–51.
On the 49ers’ roster a second straight year is Tijuana native Alfredo Gutiérrez, who was assigned to them last year through the International Player Pathway program. He has a roster exemption because of that status. He spent last season on the practice squad and is assured a spot there if he does not make the 53-man roster.
Last December, the 49ers were awarded NFL marketing rights in Mexico with nine teams (including the Cardinals) as well as in the United Kingdom with six teams.
London will host three games this season: the Minnesota Vikings vs. the Saints in Oct. 2, the New York Giants vs. the Green Bay Packers on Oct. 8, and the Denver Broncos vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars on Oct. 30. Tottenham Stadium will host those first two games and Wembley Stadium hosts the Broncos-Jaguars.